Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Padraic's Wonderful Dragoons Lair Wallaby

I couldn't just make fun stuff for one of my little ones I had to spread the handmade love around. I have been knitting for a little over a year now, and a little intimidated about making a sweater, but when I saw there was a knit-a-log on line I said to myself, at least I will not be alone.



I am really glad I did, because as you can see in these pictures, Padraic is going to grow pretty fast into this.

I had three skeins of Mosaic Moon yarn in the Dragoons Lair colorway and four 2oz trim skeins, I thought that for sure would be enough for a sweater for my little man, Right? Right after casing on an knitting the base ribbing  for the 2T size, I realized, between the time it was going to take for me to knit this and the fact that winter is coming to an end (thank goodness), I really should be making a 4T Wallaby. So I frogged it and started again.

Monday, March 22, 2010

Maeve, A Mommy Made Outfit Just for Our Little Sprite

About 6 weeks ago we decided that our little sprites head was not rounding out on it own, so our pediatrician suggested we look into Cranial Technologies. I need to be honest here, I really was skeptical as to the success of a simple band and some Velcro would have on reversing the odd shape her head developed into, I am happy to say this helmet has been the most wonderful and welcome surprise.   

After a week of adding stickers to a white helmet, I decided I wanted her to have a head band to be proud of and I began looking around for someone to paint it. Everywhere I went I got turned away, there were a lot of reasons from liability insurance issues, to the time frame in which the art would need to be completed (the helmet should be worn a minimum of 20 hours a day), so I decided I can do this myself.

I went to Michaels' bought some acrylic paints and brushes, mustered up the courage by pouring a tall glass of red wine and this is what I came up with:






After adding a few Stickers, here is the final product:


After a few days I decided she need a coordinating outfit as well, and with all this newly discovered creative talent why not give sewing a try as well. Armed with the information and pattern I found on Make Baby Stuff.com I headed over to a friends house, as she has a newer, more user friendly sewing machine than I, and here are the results of that Sunday afternoon:



So as you can imagine I am just over the moon happy with myself, and Maeve looks like a star in her Mommy made outfit.

Thursday, March 18, 2010

The Internet and Images

Today I took the time to go through and begun the tedious process of digitally cleaning up all of my pictures out there on the internet. I deleted all of my images on Picasa and started uploading them again with a watermark that says "Crickets Lullaby", it is really small, so I don't think it is obtrusive.

Monday, March 8, 2010

My Test Pair

I am in the middle of working on becoming a licensed knitter of all of Amber Perry's Butt Knits Patterns.

Step one, buy and fill out an application, Check.
Step two, knit a tester/product sample, Check.

 

I chose to knit the new born size and add the Gossamer face embroidery. 


Step three, Submit pictures for approval, Check. 

So now the waiting game begins, and my fingers are crossed that hopefully she likes them. 

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Cricket Chirp Converter

More then one I have mentioned "you can tell the temperature outside by how many times a cricket chirps" but until now I didn't know the exact formula, so here it is:

Take the number of times a cricket chirps in 15 seconds and add 40 so for example:

A cricket chirps 30 times in 15 seconds, 30 + 40 = 70 degrees fahrenheit

If you need it a more official Cricket Chirp Converter put out by Tim Brice and Todd Hall can be found here.